Volkswagen has been struggling here in the US, but in emerging markets the German automaker is among the best. VW has been a big player in China since way before it was cool, and now Mr. Winterkorn and co. are focusing their attention on the booming India market. VW is planning on producing 240,000 vehicles per year in India by 2012, and it's using two small cars to supply much of the volume. The size and price of the Polo compact and the upcoming Up! minicar are perfect for the India market, an

Over the course of the last three major international auto shows in Frankfurt, Tokyo and Los Angeles, Volkswagen unveiled a new family of small, highly-efficient cars. Like the original air-cooled models that represented the first three decades of the company's commercial existence, the rear-engined two-door spawned other body styles. Beginning with the up!, the four-door space up! and the micro-bus-inspired space up! blue followed. This week at the Bologna Motor show in Italy, Volkswagen showed

General Motors' European arm has decided that it won't jump feet-first into the micro-car segment with Smart, and more recently Toyota and Volkswagen. Speaking with Automotive News Europe, GM's Euro-veep Carl-Peter Forster said that, "These specialized urban vehicles have a limited market." True enough, but it's a market that stands to go through a growth spurt in the coming years, and GM's decision to opt out of providing a competitive product might be a shortsighted move.

There are a mind-boggling amount of video hosting services around. One of them, webcastr, let us know about a new video they're hosting that is Car and Driver's look at the VW Up! concept during the Frankfurt Motor Show. Unlike YouTube and other video sites, it's not that obvious to me how to embed the video to this post, so the picture above will just take you to the Webcastr page where the video is viewable. Since I can't get the new video to embed, you can watch another one about the Up! here

Over the course of the last few weeks, we've been constantly updating our comprehensive list of debuts slated for the Tokyo Motor Show, but one glaring omission continually jumped out at us: BMW. We know they'll be showing off the M3 Sedan, but it was rumored that something else would grace the Bavarian's show stand. Automotive News finally shed some light on the mystery model, but it doesn't reveal much.

We found out earlier today that the Volkswagen Up! will be more expensive than originally reported. We have known since the Up! was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show that it would not only come in plug-in (at least in concept form) and hybrid versions, but also might one day come in a full range of body styles: compact SUV, five-door minivan and convertible. Christian Schlute, who prepares a lot of photorealistic renderings of upcoming vehicles, has created three renderings of these three bod